Afraid of People

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Social anxiety is anxiety (emotional discomfort, fear, apprehension, or worry) about social situations, interactions with others, and being evaluated or scrutinized by other people. The difference between Social Anxiety and normal apprehension of social situations is that social anxiety involves an intense feeling of fear in social situations and especially situations that are unfamiliar or in which you will be watched or evaluated by others. The feeling of fear is so strong that in these types of situations you may be so worried that you feel anxious just thinking about them and will go to great lengths to avoid them.

According to the US National Comorbidity Survey, social anxiety is the number one most common anxiety disorder and is also the third most common mental disorder in the U.S. An estimated 19.2 million Americans suffer from social anxiety disorder and it can occur at any time but most often it surfaces in adolescence, early adulthood, or even early childhood. Statistically it is also more common in women than in men.

It occurs for different reasons. Developmental social anxiety occurs early in childhood as a normal part of the development of social functioning, and is a stage that most children grow out of, but problem or chronic social anxiety may persist (perhaps unnoticed) until adolescence or may surface in adulthood. People vary in how often they experience social anxiety and in which kinds of situations.

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I can guarantee you don’t want this disorder. It is treatable, but I waited 15 horrible years for the answer.

http://twitter.com/DaveSinewave Dave Sinewave

Shyness is now considered a mental disorder?!?!?! Great society we live in. I personally consider all politicians mental patients, all CEOs a psychos, and at least 99% of the world in general Idiots.

i_drink_Scope

then u are in good company Dave.

shel

shyness, introvert people and having the social anxiety disorder are three different thing/cases. we all get shy sometimes, and it’s a just natural response of a human being.introvert people doesn’t mean they are all shy type of people, they prefer to be alone, work alone, watch a movie by himself or just stay home read a book instead of partying with lots of people and the extrovert type is the opposite of introvert people but it doesn’t mean extrovert people don’t get shy…if they don’t then that’s not normal anymore. social anxiety disorder is obviously way more extreme case and as define by the psychologist, you’ll have deeper understanding of it. in the very first part of the documentary they differentiated shyness from social anxiety disorder and they didn’t say that shyness is a disorder, it is the social anxiety….

pwndecaf

Not very perceptive, are you, Dave? Not in the 1%, either.

exsocialanxietygirl

if you listened to the video, you would know shyness and social anxiety are completely different. I hope one day you get this fucking shit disorder and realise how wrong you are. I bet you wouldn’t even last one fucking day in the mind of a person with social anxiety. You cannot judge ANY mental illness until you have experienced it.

so, fuck off.

http://twitter.com/DaveSinewave Dave Sinewave

This is just outrageous idiocy!

Kat

you obviously dont suffer social anxiety then do you you dave…if you did you’d know just how difficult it is to live with this condition.

ShaneMcGrath

All of you people who think you have anxiety and have seeked any help at all obviously don’t have it, Not a serious case of it anyway! That’s alI I need to say about it. All those out there that have it will know what I mean by that. Getting to a doctor/psychiatrist is a massive challenge in itself or even just being out in public can be a challenge, You also end up convincing yourself that getting help isn’t going to work and in some cases it doesn’t as it is so deeply hard wired into those neurons that it’s almost impossible, And for some people talking doesn’t fix anything, Especially if they don’t talk because they are either shy/nervous or have panic attacks etc etc

I agree with Kittylu’s comment as well, Usually it’s from childhood. Traumatic experience of some sort, or parents split up, or growing up alone no brothers or sisters to talk to etc etc a million different reasons that can lead to it. Only way to beat it is to slowly face it one step at a time literally. Face the fear head on, step outside and gradually add more social situations until you are comfortable and can add more, May take you weeks/months/years but you have to get out of the house.
Shel,
Shyness/introverts/social anxiety may be different but you can bet those that suffer will usually have all 3 at once to some degree, I did!
If you are normal then yeah you may experience one of those at some point in your life.
Psychological problems are becoming a major problem in the world today and it’s growing at an alarming rate especially amongst the young.

kittylu

Social anxiety disorder is so often a response to some terrible life experiences.

katyday

new mental disorders- more reasons to drug people

Gabby

That doesn’t make sense. You’re not picking random shy people, assigning them a disorder and then commanding them to take drugs. People actually go to the doctor because they feel awful, and work with the doctor in order to feel less awful, and often medication is a part of that. And if it helps a person feel less awful, what’s the problem?

Simon Gramstrup

For those that cant understand the negative reactions to this video, here’s a few things to consider.

‘Projection Bias’ – we all have it. When we see or hear someone behaving in a way different from what we do ourselves, we try to fit that behavior into our subjective perspective of the world. The usual result is to derive at the wrong causes, the wrong solutions, and some disbelief/anger.

‘Cognitive Dissonance’ – we all have it. When we see or hear someone doing something ‘out of order’ or abnormal, it triggers the brain to react. The stages of reaction goes something like this, curiosity -> try to help -> annoyance -> anger.

A cognitive disorder is any behavior that severely handicaps you in the environment around you.

Basically, if a person haven’t experienced a disorder personally or with someone close, it is almost impossible for them to put themselves in ‘others shoes’. It would be fair to argue that, not being able to recognize and understand the behavior of others, is a disability in it self – don’t get angry with them.

exsocialanxietygirl

i have had many experiences of feeling completely overwhelmed, especially when i was in high school. I would find myself going to extreme lengths to avoid english class, where the teacher was very eccentric always randomly picking on people to speak in the class/answer questions. every week i became worse and worse, i would premeditate a plan to fake sick on days when i had english. i would turn up for every other class but when it was time for english i would flee the school grounds by myself, and sit alone somewhere where no one could see, freaking out, crying. I’d feel enormous guilt from not going to these classes. i would also worry excessively that people in the class would notice how much i wasnt there and begin to question my absence. I began to avoid the people in my class as i felt like they were judging me every time i walked past one of them in the school yard. i also went to great lengths to avoid the teacher of that class. one lesson i decided to go… i found out we were just going to watch a video so i decided i would confront the class as i’d missed 10 previous classes in a row… it took great strength to go. once everyone was seated the movie began. the seats in the class were arranged so everyone was facing eachother (i loathed classrooms with this seating arrangement) and so while watching the movie, i began to feel like everyone was watching me, not the movie, and then i thought they could see the anxiety all over my face, see that i was about to breakdown, so i became more anxious – a vicious cycle i was always trapped in. I actually froze, i remember not being able to move, my breathing became short, i felt faint, and i began to sweat excessively. i couldnt blink, i couldnt turn my head, or look at anyone, i actually felt a tear go down my cheek – either sweat or i was crying without knowing…. all the while the movie went on… after about 50 minutes of being frozen in fear, thoughts racing through my head that everyone knew, everyone was noticing how im a freak, completely humiliated the class ended and i just left the school, unable to go to any following classes afterward….

thats only one of the many severe anxiety experiences i have faced in my life.
after that year, i was contemplating suicide, so decided to tell my mother what i was experiencing… we went to the doctors, he reffered me to a psychologist, who tried to use hypnosis on me. this failed as i was anxious the whole time, thinking he was watching me, judging me- thus couldnt slip out of conciousness. I then tried the school counsellor – she lectured me – and i really didnt want anyone to know or see me slipping into her office. however, she organised that i could come to her office whenever i felt too anxious for class. i took advantage of this – but it wasnt enough. VCE was coming and i need more help as i couldnt afford to miss as many classes during VCE. so mum booked me into seeing a psychiatrist, and he prescribed me seratonine, an SSRI, which helped, however made me feel drousy and lagged in every way possible. a year and a half of that medication and i had got through VCE finally. it helped me through the year – however now VCE had finished i wanted to be relieved of the constant drousiness seratonine made… so i swapped to Sandoz/prozac and have been able to function near to normally…

sorry for the life story

Jbob

The music in this doc is making me anxious that’s for sure.
Great excuse to live in my parents place and not have a job though, Thanks!

Also if you notice the kid at 14:40 it is dressed way less ridiculously than the next child. Which makes me think that the second kids parents were possibly nuts. Plus babies are tempermental so the experiment is just garbage unless there’s more to it than they’re conveying.
Anyways the music is garbage, this doc is garbage get the fuck over it, smarten up and stop feeling sorry for yourself.

Alex

No one is making you fucking watch this. Just because you’re incapable of grasping the concept of this VERY REAL disorder, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. So I suggest you get the fuck over your giant ego, smarten up, and stop being a dick.

Jbob

Suck a dick I’m never watching one of your shitty docs again

Ellie

STOP ASKING ME RHETORICAL QUESTIONS O_O Very informative, I am on of those people who is the opposite of shy… I enjoyed this